The first five screens from Elite: Dangerous look not too shabby at all.

It's taken 20 years for a new sequel to the famed Elite to come along, but now that it's actually happening it looks like it might just be worth the wait. Elite: Dangerous Senior Producer Michael Brookes yesterday posted the first four screens to be taken from the game and promised that something else "pretty cool" is also in the works but isn't quite ready yet. A fifth screen that looks like it's part of the bunch and has thus been tossed into the mix was posted on Facebook.

They're perhaps not the most blistering eye candy ever but they look pretty decent, and I don't think Elite is really about brilliant graphics first and foremost anyway. And since it's still very much a work in progress, it's reasonable to expect visual upgrades down the road; Brookes noted that the last image in the bunch "has had some very minor tweaks to pass along to the modellers for their next round of improvements."

Elite: Dangerous was a big success on Kickstarter, raising almost $2.4 million over 60 days at the end of 2012. The game is currently (and probably tentatively) expected to come out in March 2014.

I Loved, frick'in Loved Elite 2 as a kid, but I just can't get excited about this. While I worry about say projects like Star citizen at least I'm seeing how its developing, with the Elite guys they are being way to coy and considering their last few projects have been canceled during dev and never seen the light doesn't make me very optimistic nor enthusiastic.

Ruairi iliffe:I Loved, frick'in Loved Elite 2 as a kid, but I just can't get excited about this. While I worry about say projects like Star citizen at least I'm seeing how its developing, with the Elite guys they are being way to coy and considering their last few projects have been canceled during dev and never seen the light doesn't make me very optimistic nor enthusiastic.

David Braben has been mumbling about making a new one for what must be 10 or 15 years now, he comes off as kind of a self aggrandizing asshole. I wish Ian Bell still had some level of control over the property, he seems like a decent guy.

That said, this is quite possibly the prettiest piece of eye candy I've ever seen. I don't know what Mr. Chalk was thinking, this looks like an absolutely gorgeous space game. I guess it helps that we haven't had a AAA space game since, what, X-Wing Alliance? I guess the X series might count too, but they always seemed smaller scale to me in terms of production values.

I'm still not too terribly interested in it, I'm not a fan of the space trading genre. Give me Wing Commander descendants, not Elite descendants. I liked the original Elite, but to this day that's the only game in the subgenre I've enjoyed.

David Braben has been mumbling about making a new one for what must be 10 or 15 years now, he comes off as kind of a self aggrandizing asshole. I wish Ian Bell still had some level of control over the property, he seems like a decent guy.

That said, this is quite possibly the prettiest piece of eye candy I've ever seen. I don't know what Mr. Chalk was thinking, this looks like an absolutely gorgeous space game. I guess it helps that we haven't had a AAA space game since, what, X-Wing Alliance? I guess the X series might count too, but they always seemed smaller scale to me in terms of production values.

I'm still not too terribly interested in it, I'm not a fan of the space trading genre. Give me Wing Commander descendants, not Elite descendants. I liked the original Elite, but to this day that's the only game in the subgenre I've enjoyed.

Honestly, I'd recommend looking around Star citizen from Chris Roberts then, as I said its look far better than this both on Eye candy level(Gods those 300i series vids) Plus its more a combat focus, esp the Squadron 42 standalone which is basically, Wing commander 5 sans the universe.

David Braben has been mumbling about making a new one for what must be 10 or 15 years now, he comes off as kind of a self aggrandizing asshole. I wish Ian Bell still had some level of control over the property, he seems like a decent guy.

That said, this is quite possibly the prettiest piece of eye candy I've ever seen. I don't know what Mr. Chalk was thinking, this looks like an absolutely gorgeous space game. I guess it helps that we haven't had a AAA space game since, what, X-Wing Alliance? I guess the X series might count too, but they always seemed smaller scale to me in terms of production values.

I'm still not too terribly interested in it, I'm not a fan of the space trading genre. Give me Wing Commander descendants, not Elite descendants. I liked the original Elite, but to this day that's the only game in the subgenre I've enjoyed.

Honestly, I'd recommend looking around Star citizen from Chris Roberts then, as I said its look far better than this both on Eye candy level(Gods those 300i series vids) Plus its more a combat focus, esp the Squadron 42 standalone which is basically, Wing commander 5 sans the universe.

I mean look at it.

I'm well aware of Star Citizen, when I get my next computer, Squadron 42 will probably be the first thing I buy for it :D

Edit: By the way, there already is a Wing Commander 5, it was called Wing Commander Prophecy. I'm not sure why GoG doesn't have it, but then they're missing most of the spinoffs too.

"and I don't think Elite is really about brilliant graphics first and foremost anyway."

The first game had nothing but line art, and the second was about 5 years behind the curve. So no, it was about the gameplay not the graphics.

Star Citizen with Squadron 42 sounds interesting and this may even be the one that I finally play online. I even own physical copies of WC1-5, and this looks pretty promising. Of course, I also loved the original Elite, so I will probably keep it on my list to check out development.

That said, this is quite possibly the prettiest piece of eye candy I've ever seen. I don't know what Mr. Chalk was thinking, this looks like an absolutely gorgeous space game. I guess it helps that we haven't had a AAA space game since, what, X-Wing Alliance? I guess the X series might count too, but they always seemed smaller scale to me in terms of production values.

I donno man, the screenshots look like something I would've expected to see in Earth & Beyond. And I'm not talking about the design of the ships--anyone who's seen any screenshots of previous Elites can see that's a direct homage to the originals--I mean the rest of it. Maybe the screens aren't exactly doing it justice, but to me, it looks 10 years old.

Not that I have a problem with that. I thought EnB was pretty too, and I fired up EnB Emulator several months back and still thought it was pretty. Albeit a bit lonely and the slog to 150 as a JE was not something I wanted to do.

I'm still not too terribly interested in it, I'm not a fan of the space trading genre. Give me Wing Commander descendants, not Elite descendants. I liked the original Elite, but to this day that's the only game in the subgenre I've enjoyed.

I'm going to have to disagree there. The problem is that there really doesn't seem to be anything else that sets this new Elite apart from all the other Elite clones. What will this game do that the original Elite doesn't? More importantly, what does it do that Star Citizen, Eve, X, Freelancer, Privateer, Wing Commander, and a bunch of others don't? A game that does new and interesting things can get away with lower quality graphics, but a game that sells itself as "Basically the same as that game you once liked, only newer", graphics are by far one of the most important parts. Cut out the pictures and the Kickstarter blurb could easily be trying to sell the original game. If you're not going to compete on gameplay or graphics, what's the point?